Who isn't signing off?

I'm monitoring our license server and I get reports of how many users are on at any given moment.

I have a few people who never sign off and they are starting to affect work. I've tried to be nice and send stern yet friendly emails reminding people but now I'm going to have to start taking some action.

Does anyone have any scripts (windows or unix is fine) or methodology on how to see who isn't signing off from the license server log file?

I could probably hack something together, but why bother if someone else has already done this and is willing to share?

If no one has it though and wants to share ideas about how to approach it, I'm open.
kbmurphy - Thu Sep 17 13:02:29 EDT 2009

Re: Who isn't signing off?
sammyc - Thu Sep 17 16:25:35 EDT 2009

I assume that you know how to use the admin tool to see connected users and disconnect them and probably are using the View Log function in LMTools to see the users that check in and out a license. I am looking internally for others options.

Re: Who isn't signing off?
kbmurphy - Thu Sep 17 17:00:20 EDT 2009

sammyc - Thu Sep 17 16:25:35 EDT 2009
I assume that you know how to use the admin tool to see connected users and disconnect them and probably are using the View Log function in LMTools to see the users that check in and out a license. I am looking internally for others options.

Yes, I can do that....but it involves me being up at midnight to see who is on. I'd rather automate it and provide reports of offenders to management.

I appreciate you looking into this for me!!

Re: Who isn't signing off?
mcnairk - Fri Sep 18 08:27:20 EDT 2009

kbmurphy - Thu Sep 17 17:00:20 EDT 2009
Yes, I can do that....but it involves me being up at midnight to see who is on. I'd rather automate it and provide reports of offenders to management.

I appreciate you looking into this for me!!

Others in this forum have given me flak for this suggestion, but I will repeat it again:

Our users access DOORS via Citrix, so have I configured Widows Terminal Services to force users out after a period of inactivity, e.g. an hour, freeing up their license. Unsaved changes will be lost - too bad. Others have suggested that this might result in stale locks or corruption, but I have seen no evidence of this in several years.

Drastic, but people will not do as they are told (even after a nastygram to their manager)!

Your mileage may vary.

Ken.

Re: Who isn't signing off?
llandale - Fri Sep 18 09:31:59 EDT 2009

This probably isn't realistic, but maybe it will make you feel better. You could have database module open and object sync triggers, that keep track of the current time. If one such trigger was say a hour after the previous, then the trigger will display some sort of 'naughty naughty' infoBox whenever they do something, perhaps for 10 minutes. Or instead of an infobox, just add a 15 second delay.

You could also insist that all user's put their Mother's email and phone number in their user info, and tell her about the offender.

Louie

Re: Who isn't signing off?
kbmurphy - Fri Sep 18 13:43:42 EDT 2009

mcnairk - Fri Sep 18 08:27:20 EDT 2009
Others in this forum have given me flak for this suggestion, but I will repeat it again:

Our users access DOORS via Citrix, so have I configured Widows Terminal Services to force users out after a period of inactivity, e.g. an hour, freeing up their license. Unsaved changes will be lost - too bad. Others have suggested that this might result in stale locks or corruption, but I have seen no evidence of this in several years.

Drastic, but people will not do as they are told (even after a nastygram to their manager)!

Your mileage may vary.

Ken.

Thanks for the Citrix suggestion, Ken. We may go that route, but it's hard to do so when you have so many clients installed already. It's like we'll have to upgrade to DOORS 10 before we could truly stomp out the renegades. But Citrix would work for this.

I know there's been an enhancement request to track idle DOORS users forever, and that's the extra thing. I don't want to annoy/bother/kick any user who is actively working, but there's really no way to tell without doing some convoluted trigger work, sort of like Louie suggested.

Very annoying problem.

Re: Who isn't signing off?
sammyc - Fri Sep 18 13:56:23 EDT 2009

So far - no luck internally, just as u mentioned, this has been an issue for some time and I'm not sure it will be resolved soon. But I did get a reply about a new Flexnet add-on for helping with this issue. See this link that describes a tool for monitoring license usage - called License Saver:
http://kb.x-formation.com/questions/175/How+to+set+up+License+Saver+with+FLEXlm%7B47%7DFLEXnet+applications

I will keep looking inside for now...

Re: Who isn't signing off?
sammyc - Mon Sep 21 12:39:34 EDT 2009

Hey Kevin,
I talked with one of the consultants and he did something for a cust that might be close to what you want. He added an include statement in the startup files that would write the username and login time to a file and another in finish files that would record the username and logout time. He sent me the files and code for this if you are interested. Let me know by private message and I'll forward them along. I have had no other success except for the FlextNet addon feature called License Saver and I'm checking with our tech support to see if it can support use with our license server.

Re: Who isn't signing off?
kbmurphy - Mon Sep 21 16:14:15 EDT 2009

sammyc - Mon Sep 21 12:39:34 EDT 2009
Hey Kevin,
I talked with one of the consultants and he did something for a cust that might be close to what you want. He added an include statement in the startup files that would write the username and login time to a file and another in finish files that would record the username and logout time. He sent me the files and code for this if you are interested. Let me know by private message and I'll forward them along. I have had no other success except for the FlextNet addon feature called License Saver and I'm checking with our tech support to see if it can support use with our license server.

Sammy,

Thanks so much for the License Saver link. This is definitely a potential solution.

I would PM you, but I have no idea how to do that. I am interested in that startup script. I did get to your DW profile page but could not find information on how to send you a PM.

Thanks!! Your help is really appreciated.

Re: Who isn't signing off?
sammyc - Mon Sep 21 23:52:59 EDT 2009

kbmurphy - Mon Sep 21 16:14:15 EDT 2009
Sammy,

Thanks so much for the License Saver link. This is definitely a potential solution.

I would PM you, but I have no idea how to do that. I am interested in that startup script. I did get to your DW profile page but could not find information on how to send you a PM.

Thanks!! Your help is really appreciated.

On my profile, right under my name - it says "Message Colleague" - you click that link and send me an email directly - I'll reply to you with the content files.

Re: Who isn't signing off?
jsarkic - Fri Nov 13 09:58:58 EST 2009

One option that has worked effectively for us at GD Canada is as follows:

Every DOORS database is launched from a DOORS shortcut where a DXL script is executed using the -cli option. In this DXL script, an MS Windows scheduled task is set up to kill all DOORS clients on the user's computer at 1:00 a.m. This time co-incides with our backup process when all servers are shutdown. Once the servers are brought down, the DOORS clients will not be able to reconnect with the servers when they are brought back online. This gives us the justification to kill the clients and free up the licenses.

Re: Who isn't signing off?
llandale - Fri Nov 13 13:02:08 EST 2009

If I were Tony Goodman, I'd suggest having an admin check for residual logins in the morning and disable the offender's account for a day. Or set up some database wide trigger that accepts the names of offenders and acks them every 15 minutes not to do it again.

Louie

Re: Who isn't signing off?
llandale - Fri Nov 13 13:03:47 EST 2009

You could get IT involved. Query every active client at Midnight getting the Process ID of every doors.exe running. At 1am, get the Process IDs again, and when there's a match kill it.

Louie

Re: Who isn't signing off?
ePiallat - Mon Nov 16 08:23:02 EST 2009

llandale - Fri Nov 13 13:03:47 EST 2009
You could get IT involved. Query every active client at Midnight getting the Process ID of every doors.exe running. At 1am, get the Process IDs again, and when there's a match kill it.

Louie

We had a similar problem we solved directly through our license monitoring software.

I couldn't find it back, but there are tons of them (simply google php flexlm monitoring).

Alternatively, if you have a unix station available, simply add to your crontab:


0 5 * * *              /usr/bin/lmstat -f DOORS >> /tmp/doorsusage

Of course, you may have to fix lmstat path and feature's name (sometimes, it's DOORSPC instead of DOORS. Check your license file.)

Re: Who isn't signing off?
kbmurphy - Mon Dec 07 12:14:25 EST 2009

ePiallat - Mon Nov 16 08:23:02 EST 2009
We had a similar problem we solved directly through our license monitoring software.

I couldn't find it back, but there are tons of them (simply google php flexlm monitoring).

Alternatively, if you have a unix station available, simply add to your crontab:


0 5 * * *              /usr/bin/lmstat -f DOORS >> /tmp/doorsusage

Of course, you may have to fix lmstat path and feature's name (sometimes, it's DOORSPC instead of DOORS. Check your license file.)

What I wound up doing was getting a Linux virtual machine configured and set up a perl script that could be accessed over Apache that would provide an ad-hoc report of users logged in more than 24 hours. So it's not an "automatic" notification, but we can get the information we need whenever we like.